


Space Gods

by Magnolia_in_black_Velvet



Series: Ficlets inspired by art [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 07:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15431919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnolia_in_black_Velvet/pseuds/Magnolia_in_black_Velvet
Summary: There are beings out in space - Gods, some of the spacefarers call them; aliens, the scientists say. Barely anything is known about them except that they are keeping to themselves, never set food on a planet and are powerful enough to destroy whole spaceships.Tony ... doesn't care. He's three when he meets Loki for the first time and over the years grows just more determined to stay in contact with his first and best friend. Even if it means learning a strange new language, or inventing a way to contact Loki, or keep things secret from his other friends.Even if it means falling in love with someone who ages on a different rate than him, dooming any relationship long before all contact between their races is forbidden.Can their love overcome the rules of gods and differences between their races?





	Space Gods

**Author's Note:**

> This story would never have been written if I didn't stumble over [this](http://stark-dm.tumblr.com/post/155451628113/space-au-u-can-use-this-playlist-for-making-space) beautiful art by stark-dm on tumblr (seriously, go look at it, it's Silverfox!Tony and SpaceGod!Loki and its awesome and deserves all the love you can give it!) and literally fell in love with it. Of course, because I can't just keep things short this ended up being more than 12000 words and could have easily been more ...

The first time Tony saw him he was three years old and  had left earth for the very first time.

They had taken his father's private ship so no-one stopped him from wandering around - though he remembered getting shooed out of the machine room  _trice_ \- and so he eventually settled himself in one of the couches on the observation deck, his projects projected in the air around him and all in all not too unhappy to be left to his own devises.

With his mother planning parties and catching up with friends, his father busy with the company and his nanny being down with space sickness he was left unattended save for Jarvis' occasional visit to make sure that he ate and slept every now and then, so he had no idea how many days they had been in space when he looked out of the window and saw a boy running beside their ship.

It took him quite a while to notice that his mouth had fallen open, or that his pad had cluttered to the ground, too stunned was he with what he saw. Jumping up and running towards the rounded window he pressed his hands against the transparent aluminum and looked out to their extraordinary escort.

The boy looked not much older than him, with skin as velvety dark as the sky over their house in Malibu just before it went completely black and hair that was even darker, trailing behind him and eclipsing the light of the stars. Or maybe it were his wings that did it, golden and glowing from within.

With earth being something of a must-have-seen-at-least-once for extraterrestrials Tony had seen many many aliens already so it wasn't the shape of him that was disturbing – he’d seen far stranger creatures roaming New York, clutching their souvenirs in their tentacles while asking for directions in a very bubbly version of Standard. No, much more than his shape it was the fact that he was running out there, _in space,_ where there were no air nor atmosphere to keep your blood from boiling, easily keeping pace with them when they were going at a speed that was fast enough to render the stars to gleaming stripes.

Maybe he had made a noise, or maybe his shape had been visible against the window, for suddenly the boy looked over to him and then he took another leap and suddenly he was there, _in front of the window,_ his fingers sticking to the pane as if he were a fly sitting on glass, peering curiously inside.

Tony stumbled back, scared for a moment, before he carefully stepped back to the window.

The boy smiled, then waved with an enthusiasm that seemed a little at odds with the small horns growing just under the line of his hair and the eyes that  _glowed_ red.

But Tony was no coward and so he waved back, a little shy at first, then more enthusiastic himself when it made the other boy smile wider, revealing a row of sharp little teeth under his black lips.

He never remembered, later, who started making faces at the other, but he remembered spending a good while there at the window, with the boy at the outside taking on the most absurd positions while he tried to imitate him, or jumped like a tree frog, or moved his arms like the wings of a bird and walked around like a hen searching for her chicks. The boy smiled at his antics and laughed and Tony found himself smiling and laughing, too, because he couldn't remember ever having had this much fun.

It only ended when the boy looked over Tony's shoulder, his smile growing dimmer, and then he waved one last time before pushing himself off the ship and vanishing in the star stripes out there.

Turning around Tony saw Jarvis coming up on him, an apologetic look on his face.

"I am sorry to interrupt you, young master. Your mother asked for you."

Tony couldn't help but wish that if his mother remembered his existence, it had been at another time. Still, maybe ... "There was a boy out there in space", he said, unsure whether Jarvis had seen him. "How can he live there without air?"

Jarvis smiled. "It must be a God of Space, then", he said, putting a warm hand on Tony’s shoulder.

Tony blinked. "There are no gods", he said, unsure.

"Maybe, or maybe they just don't interact with us mortals very often. Come, young master. Let's go see your mother, and then you can look up what we know about the Gods out there."

  


There wasn't much to learn about them, Tony learned later, over the course of weeks and months and years he researched them, though it was neither for lack of trying nor because sightings were rare. Quite contrary - when he put his query in the net practically flooded his pad with more entries about the Gods of Space than even he could ever read.

Most were stories of encounters of explorers and spacefarers with them, written down in the same way as earlier generations of seafarers had told stories of mermaids. Sometimes the Gods - the aesir, they called them, after the golden gods of the mythical Asgard that earth's seafaring vikings had worshiped - just ran beside the ship, in turns ignoring it or watching the people within as the boy had done. At other times they warned the ships of dangerous detritus in their way, or shooed them away from certain corners of the space without any reason at all (the captains always, always turned around, even if there had never been an incident where the aesir attacked a ship).

Tony supposed that beings that could somehow live in space simply intimidated the captains enough that they didn’t want to hang around to find out what else they could do.

There were scientific papers, too, though not as many as he would have liked, and even those that existed made it obvious that what they  _didn't_ knew far outstripped what they  _did_ . 

They suspected, mostly because no-one had ever seen an aesir planetside, that they lived in space because while their bodies were capable of existing in vacuum they couldn't tolerate atmosphere, like deep sea fish didn't survive being brought to the surface.

They didn't interact with people much beyond the occasional waving, but that didn't mean that they  _feared_ them. Encounters happened in outer space, yes, but just as often it happened close to inhabited planets or along busy ship routes. They also didn't differentiate between species or even communities of species - records taken from a Klingon ship showed that they had the same encounters with the aesir - which they called jotnar - as the Federation did.

Another thing they all agreed on - the aesir were as different to each other as different kinds of fish. There were accounts of a golden man - well, he  _seemed_ to be male, not that they actually knew - with one golden and one black eye who was bigger than a small space craft and rarely ever came closer than within seeing distance. And this also often only to accompany an equally golden female that was known for leaving warnings from dangers. Another male, a little smaller, with skin like polished chestnuts and pupil-less eyes of gold, who brought warnings of dangers and maybe territories both. One that the scientists couldn't agree on whether they were male or female and who was even bigger than the first, with skin the color of glacial ice that showed a wicked sense of humor. A pale-skinned one who was said to be almost rounder than large, though still as big as an adult human, with freckles and red hair flying after him like a corona. 

No mention of a dark blue boy, but of many, many more.

  


Yet no matter how much Tony searched, there didn't seem to be any way to contact these beings, even though many attempts had been made, and after a while the memory of the boy faded from his mind, leaving him with the happy-sad feeling of a lost dream.

That is, until his father decided that no school on the satellite they’d been living on for four years now was good enough for his son and sent a seven-year-old Tony back to earth.

Tony had been out in space more often in the meantime, hoping in vain to see the other kid again, so when he settled on the observation deck this time it was more because the crew had come to expect it - and because his last projects had been packed in storage, so no tinkering for the three day journey - than because he actually expected to see him again.

Which was probably why he startled again as badly as the first time when he looked up from his pad to the clear pane over him looking out at the stars and saw the boy lying on it, peaking in, that not only did he lose his pad but ended himself falling backwards in the pillows behind him.

The boy laughed at that, so violently he almost lost his hold on the pane, and Tony tried to glare at him despite the blush warming his cheeks.

Yet he couldn't stay mad at the other for long when, once he'd calmed down, the boy waved in to him with a smile so wide that Tony thought he might remember him.

Slowly he stepped towards the window, and the boy slipped down the pane until he stood right across from Tony.

It had been year ago and Tony had only been three years of age then, but he was still sure that last time the boy had been a good bit bigger and older than him. This time around he looked just as old as Tony; a boy of about seven years. His dark skin had gained some small signs on it - though Tony wasn't quite sure; they were barely visible -, his horns had grown a little longer and his wings, when he spread them in excitement, were a little less the plumage of a cherub and more the feathering of a young sparrow. 

The spark in his eyes, all mischief and fun and excitement, was the same.

As was the way he waved his hand at Tony and suddenly he remembered - they had tried to communicate last time, with hands and laughing and Tony impersonating the animals he knew, but they hadn't spoken, and four years of researching aesir hadn't given Tony much hope in being able to do so.

But he was  _Tony Stark_ , and he wasn't used to giving up - except when it was his father - and so he just ran back to where his pad had fallen in the floor again, opened a writing program and then scribbled in the largest letters he could find  _TONY_ all over the page.

Returning to the pane where the boy was watching him with a little frown he turned the pad around to show it to him.

The aes studied the pad for a long moment and Tony thought, his excitement fading, that of course he couldn't read Standard lettering or the aesir would have talked to some scientists long before now.

He still hadn't expected him to push away from the window and Tony felt his heart leap in fear - he hadn't wanted him to go,  _really_ , he  _hadn't_ , or he wouldn't have said anything - but then the boy only looked around, just like he was searching for something, before he came back. His shins and one hand pressed against the pane that Tony could see his skin flatten he put one finger of his right hand against his lips in what could only be a sign for  _Stay Silent_ .

Holding his breath Tony nodded.

The boy looked around again - making it so very obvious that he was doing something he wasn't supposed to -, then leaned in and breathed against the window.

There wasn't air out in space, even less water, yet somehow still a thin layer of hoarfrost formed on the pane. Smiling at what Tony was sure was his completely flabbergasted and hilarious face, the boy wrote  _LOKI_ with a finger on the pane.

Staring at the boy - staring at  _Loki_ \- Tony could feel excitement bubble up in him and he shared a wide grin with the other boy.

This felt like the begin of a beautiful friendship.

  


Loki followed the ship for most of the rest of the journey, chatting with Tony through the pane and only vanishing occasionally when someone looked after Tony, obviously intend on staying out of view of others. Not that it held him back long; as soon as the intruders - members of the crew because neither his mother nor father had had time to accompany him this time - were gone Loki was there again, smiling and waving and demanding another explanation.

Because Tony found that Loki was devastatingly smart and terrible curious and his questions never ceased. Having never been to a planet - he did answer Tony's questions, too, though it was slow going seeing as he had to write everything down while Tony only had to load the next Wikipedia article - he wanted to know everything. What a planet looked like under the atmosphere. What water was. Could Tony explain plants? What did Tony mean, different races? Yes, Loki had seen that people looked different, but so did aesir - he actually used a different word here, a sign that he didn't write down and just showed Tony, signing it out in a three-dimensional way that got Tony excited because if he could learn this language then talking to Loki would become so much easier - and how was he supposed to know that there were actually as many people on each of these small balls of stone encased in air as there were stars out there and each of them had developed separately?

(That actually seemed to boggle his mind so much that he vanished for a while and let Tony sleep for a few hours before he came back and, knocking against the window, started his barreling of questions again.)

Not that Tony wasn't at least as curious about a race that literally lived in space, running the currents of the aether - he wasn't sure but he thought Loki was referring to gravitational forces and that boggled  _his_ mind - and eating literal sunlight and, apparently, space dust. He even told Tony a little of what an aesir's life was like - which was very slow going because while Loki seemed to have figured out Standard didn't have words for many of the concepts Loki needed, leaving him to carefully explain them and letting both of them hope Tony did understand. 

The one thing Loki wasn't happy to talk about was his family - he had three parents, apparently, and four siblings, and that was all he said - and he didn't want to talk about why the aesir didn't contact any other beings when they were so obviously capable of doing so at all, only made Tony swear again that he would keep their conversation a secret. 

  


Loki followed the ship for most of the rest of the journey, chatting with Tony through the pane and only vanishing occasionally when someone looked after Tony, obviously intend on staying out of view of others. Not that it held him back long; as soon as the intruders - members of the crew because neither his mother nor father had had time to accompany him this time - were gone Loki was there again, smiling and waving and demanding another explanation.

Because Tony found that Loki was devastatingly smart and terrible curious and his questions never ceased. Having never been to a planet - he did answer Tony's questions, too, though it was slow going seeing as he had to write everything down while Tony only had to load the next Wikipedia article - he wanted to know everything. What a planet looked like under the atmosphere. What water was. Could Tony explain plants? What did Tony mean, different races? Yes, Loki had seen that people looked different, but so did aesir - he actually used a different word here, a sign that he didn't write down and just showed Tony, signing it out in a three-dimensional way that got Tony excited because if he could learn this language then talking to Loki would become so much easier - and how was he supposed to know that there were actually as many people on each of these small balls of stone encased in air as there were stars out there and each of them had developed separately?

(That actually seemed to boggle his mind so much that he vanished for a while and let Tony sleep for a few hours before he came back and, knocking against the window, started his barreling of questions again.)

Not that Tony wasn't at least as curious about a race that literally lived in space, running the currents of the aether - he wasn't sure but he thought Loki was referring to gravitational forces and that boggled  _his_ mind - and eating literal sunlight and, apparently, space dust. He even told Tony a little of what an aesir's life was like - which was very slow going because while Loki seemed to have figured out Standard didn't have words for many of the concepts Loki needed, leaving him to carefully explain them and letting both of them hope Tony did understand. 

The one thing Loki wasn't happy to talk about was his family - he had three parents, apparently, and four siblings, and that was all he said - and he didn't want to talk about why the aesir didn't contact any other beings when they were so obviously capable of doing so at all, only made Tony swear again that he would keep their conversation a secret.

  


Yet no matter how long the journey had seemed when Tony had boarded the ship three days ago, it had to come to an end. And while Loki promised to find him again Tony still wasn't happy about letting his first and only friend go.

School was ... surprisingly good at keeping him distracted. He was one of the youngest there but where in his former school everyone had - either because of awkwardness or envy - shut him out here it didn't hinder him to make friends with the other students.

His favorites were Rhodey, a boy who was two year older than him and shared most of his science classes, and Pepper, who was only a month younger and better than him in languages.

It was the latter that made him broach the subject of a three-dimensional language - "You mean like sign language?", Pepper excitingly interrupted him - that could be used in space, and how one would go about learning it when the individuals using it had a completely different value system and the person learning it only had like three days to do so.

(It was Rhodey who said, "Like learning to talk to the Gods of Space?", but it was Pepper who said she wanted to know if it worked, even if he wasn't telling her who he wanted to speak to.)

(Tony was pretty sure that Pepper would be an awesome translater when she was older, improving the universal translater and maybe even being send as official translater to important meetings, the same way he was sure that Rhodey would end on a starship exploring space, either as an engineer or the helmsman; his best friend hadn't decided yet.)

(He also also thought that maybe, just maybe, he might want to not lead Stark Industries later and be the Chief Engineer on the same ship as his friends, exploring new space and spending time with the other friend he couldn't tell them about.)

  


The friend he didn't saw again until he returned to school after a very boring holiday he had spend wishing his mother would spend a little more time with him, or his father not shooe him out of his lab, or worrying that Loki had forgotten about him and wouldn't turn up again anymore.

All the happier was he when he heard a loud knock against the window not even an hour after they had departed from Sirius 4.

Yet when he turned around, already half-way to sprinting over, he was greeted by the unexpected sight of a boy about Loki's age, but with skin of pale gold and eyes so blue they seemed to glow like the sky, his golden hair flowing behind him in a not-existent wind.

For a moment he thought this was Loki, that he had changed not only his usual dark green clothing into a bright red tunica edged with silver but also his whole shape. Luckily, he didn't act upon his instinct to wave Loki hello just yet for but a moment later there was another knock, and another, and a third, and suddenly there were three more boys beside the first - no, not three boys; two of which one had wings like Loki and one that appeared to be female with a long tail slashing the vacuum behind her - and all of them were staring in like he was a fish in a tank.

Taken aback by his surprise Tony stared back, unsure what to do. Where they ... friends of Loki? Could he talk to them? Or would that break the vow of silence he had given his friend?

Then suddenly  Loki  was there, gesturing at the others so fast his movements seemed to leave a glowing path behind and, when this only worked to make them look at him in confusion - they really had very human-like expressions on their faces; much easier to read than some aliens that had a lot more in common with humanity - he started to pull at the golden boy's arm and point somewhere in space, quite obviously trying to get him to leave Tony and his ship alone.

It still took a good while and more arguing than Tony thought was necessary before the blond guy gave in - and Tony had seen this look before, it was definitely a _you're-getting-on-my-nerves-fine-I'll-let-you-do-your-thing-I'll-just-pretend-to-have-found-something-better-_ face \- and Loki looked after their vanishing forms with a frown like thunderstorms on his face.

When he turned back Tony had his pad out, asking _Care to tell me what this was about?_

Loki only grimaced and answered _My_ _sibling_ , and that was it.

  


Loki was still grumpy at first - and even Tony knew better than to ask more questions - but when Tony asked about learning his language he was first surprised, then delighted.

It took up most of the journey but Tony wouldn't miss one bit, not when learning a language that was apparently not only signed with use of the full body but also included sounds Tony couldn't hear. Promising himself that he would learn a way to hear and reproduce those parts later he focused on what he could learn, then realized that he could use the ship's - admittedly limited - sensors to record the sounds Loki made.

It worked surprisingly well once Tony had gotten the captain to not freak out over the strange wave and energy readings they had gotten, even though the range over which the aesir apparently communicated was astonishing.

Still, time flew by far too fast, and when they parted two hours away from the destination of Tony’s journey it was only Loki's promise that he would find him again that kept him from crying.

  


Loki always, _always_ found him from now on and the better Tony learned his language, the closer they became, especially after Tony found a way to send letters to his friend.

It only worked because of the aesir's extraordinary hearing range, making it possible to send a message into space that no planet-bound being could hear (and few, if any, would pick up via sensors) while the Morse code they used would hopefully keep any of the other aesir from understanding them. An interface stationed on an uninhabited moon that Tony had had outfitted with a sensor – having parents that didn’t care much about what he did with his money came in handy at times - that could pick up Loki's voice and transcript it into a message for Tony allowed Loki to answer.

Which became important far earlier than Tony had anticipated. Maybe it was the accelerated learning at their school or the fact that each of them were geniuses in their own right, but Tony had barely six years with Rhodey and Pepper until their future plans ripped them apart again.

And Tony was happy - he was truly happy - for them because he knew that Rhodey had dreamed of attending SpaceFleet Academy since before they'd known each other, and there really only was one school for linguistics good enough to teach a talent like Pepper, but it meant that he was alone again, left with only vidcalls from his two friends and the letters Loki send.

  


It may have been the reason he grew so close to Loki or maybe it was the way Loki was so obviously lonely himself, too, rarely mentioning other acquaintances as he did.

Anyway, the letters that had started out as simple descriptions of their different lives and Loki trying to explain what he called _the singing of the stars_ and Tony trying to explain how it felt to eat ice cream on a hot day turned slowly into more.

Turned into Loki complaining how Thor - his _older_ sibling, apparently - was again running around with friends that didn't want to have him there.

Turned into Tony trying to comfort Loki by asking about other aesir kids he could make friends with.

Turned into Tony cry-sending - was that a word? It should be a word, like drunk-dialling, just with less alcohol and regrets - a message when he was feeling too lonely again when Rhodey didn't call him for a month because he had exams and Pepper was in outer space, studying, and his mother had send him a make-up set for his 15th birthday and his father had only called to let him know that he would attend a gala with him, obviously having forgotten about his birthday completely.

Turned into Loki sending him a recording of his own singing just a day later, a song that, once tuned into a pitch that a human could hear, was more beautiful than anything Tony had heard even before he read the words that Loki sung, leaving him laughing for joy even as he wished he could hear it as it was meant to be heard.

Turned into a sudden - and unexpected - sting of jealousy when Loki told him he had made a friend, Amora, especially because he _was_ happy that Loki wasn't alone anymore at the same time.

Turned into taking EVA hours because he had the vague idea of surprising Loki one day by coming out into space with him.

Turned into sharing their everyday life - university, friends, studying, learning how to rule (because apparently Loki's family was royalty, wow), the breakthroughs Tony had with his experiments, exploring parts of space previously unknown - and giving advice that they sometimes screamed about into the void of their respective rooms before answering (Tony still wasn't quite over how Loki could have seen the problem with Dum-E before him and fixed it without ever having had close contact with technologies; he also wasn't sure what to make of Loki's "We do have technology, it just isn't like yours" because he hadn't seen even a little bit of it and Loki was apparently unable to show it to him).

Turned into feelings that Tony knew all too well could never become anything more. Not because of the distance created by the circumstances of their lives; Tony had found early on that he liked sex and Loki was the complete opposite of jealous, instead asking him a lot of detailed questions that Tony wouldn't have answered for anyone but him. No, the only thing that ever made Loki appear jealous was when Tony forgot him for someone else, so really, what with them being already so close to each other, sharing their dreams and hopes and fears, there was nothing that would stand against them on this front.

No, what spoke against them was Tony being human, with a human lifespan of no more than maybe one and a half century, and Loki being an aesir, a God of Space who could become older than a star if he wasn't very clumsy, and a body that seemed to be no more than ten years to Tony's fifteen now.

It wasn't much yet, but Tony could do the math, and he knew that it meant that by the time he would be old and gray Loki would have just reached his prime, and when he was just dust in space Loki would still look like the timeless prince he was.

  


And yet it was Loki who he turned to when he got the news that his parents had died - a failure in the air control system of his father's private ship, they said, causing an explosion that had ripped a hole in the outer hull. Leaving him to feel … numb, dark, empty. Not himself in a way he had never experienced before, like darkness had settled in his chest and pushed him out of his own body – just that it wasn’t darkness, wasn’t anything because he couldn’t _feel_ , couldn’t _identify_ what he felt. Could just stare as if there was an answer out there – an answer to what, he didn’t know; maybe an answer to what he was supposed to feel, to think, to _be_ now? - and tremble, cold and distant and unable to decide what to do now and desperately wishing he could have them back.

It was Loki who he contacted, and who told him to rent one of the small pleasure vessels that could be controlled by one person to come out to him.

It was Loki who was there as soon as they were out of the planet’s sensor's reach and somehow took control of the ship because Tony's hands were shaking so much and he couldn't think clearly - he wasn't sure how he had managed to convince the person he had rented the ship from that he was actually fit to fly - and he definitely had no idea how the ship had gone from drunkenly flying through space to a stable orbit around a small moon. Or barely any memory of anything he had done, actually, between Loki's first appearance in his front window and the moment, an eternity later, when he came back to himself in the cold darkness of space, wearing his clunky EVA suit and having his friend's arms slung around him as if he was trying to hold him together.

Loki had to have manipulated the sensors and sound system of the ship and the suit, too, because he could hear his voice - lower than a human's, still much higher than it truly was - through the suit's com, telling him that he was here, that Tony had every right to be upset, that Loki would stay with him until he felt better, that it was ok - ok to be upset, to react unreasonable, to _not be ok,_ because Loki was here and would make sure that he wouldn't come to harm.

And that ... that only made Tony cry suddenly - cry as he hadn't cried since he'd gotten the news because _Stark men are made of iron_ and his father wouldn't have wanted him to, and anyway he hadn't seen his parents for nine months yet and hadn't spoken to them in three - four, with his father -, and he hadn't felt like crying, really, only hollow. Hollow and brittle and cold like he'd been ripped into space alongside them, his eyes burning without tears as if whatever well they should come from had been dried out. His chest hurt, like someone had punched him there, and he hadn't been able to focus on any thought at all until Loki had send him the message to rent a ship and come to him.

And now he was here, in actual space, in the same cold and dark loneliness that had ripped the life from his parents with its greedy fingers ... only that he was alive and not alone, not when he could feel the arms around his form ... strange, he'd always thought that the aesir must be weak, what with them not having to withstand things like air pressure and planetary gravitation, but Loki didn't feel weak at all. No, even like this, looking like a small boy, Tony could feel the strength in those arms, making it so obvious that he had to be careful not to crack the suit.

He wasn't afraid. This was Loki, his friend who knew how to keep up with a star ship and cling to its hull without breaking the windows and right now his strength felt like it was the only thing keeping Tony from falling apart like so much space dust.

He didn't know how long they floated there like this - time had no meaning in space or mournings - just that at one time he became aware that he had stopped sobbing and that he wasn't shaking anymore. His tears were drying on his cheeks in annoying lines and he raised his hand to rub them away, only to have the glove collide with his helmet because, yeah, he was still in space which he shouldn't have been able to forget because really, EVA suits are hard to ignore at the best time.

*Are you feeling calmer?*, Loki asked in his ear and he felt himself smile a little, even though he didn't really feel like smiling, because Loki cared and that alone made him feel a little better.

"Yes", he said, then rolled his eyes at himself because that Loki had found a way to manipulate the sensors of the ship to translate his words into Standard didn't mean that Loki could understand him ... except it apparently _did_ because Loki smiled at him, too, a little happy and a little sad and a lot worried.

*I am sorry how your parents' death makes you feel*, he continued and that was almost harder because it meant that Loki understood - understood not only what Tony had told him about the accident but also what he hadn't told him - what he felt, and didn't feel, and the things he felt but couldn't put a name to.

And it reminded him again that no matter how distant Loki was, and how alien, he was still the one Tony had instinctively turned to when he needed help because he was the one who knew him best.

Because he was his best friend.

  


Tony could have stayed like this with Loki forever but he knew that there was no way - there were responsibilities waiting for him planet-side, and Loki had his own duties that he couldn't just forget no matter how much he might wished to.

And so he returned to the little shuttle - and he was lucky that Loki was here because he had completely forgotten to fasten himself to the ship and without Loki's help he would have spun through space until he eventually ran out of air - and waved goodbye to the lonely blue figure of his friend before he returned to the rest of the planet-dwelling members of the Federation.

He called Rhodey and Pepper and let himself be soothed further by their words - and their warm touches because both of them took the next transfer to come see him and help him through the hellish week of funeral and paparazzi wanting _just one tiny little_ interview with the boy who had, not even sixteen, become one of the hundred richest beings in the whole Federation. Helped him through the darkest nights and took the whiskey bottles away and made sure that he survived the meeting with the notary about his inheritance and, thankfully, Obie Stane, his father's vize and old friend, agreeing to take care of Stark Industries until Tony was old enough to inherit it in truth at eighteen.

Tony loved them for it and did what he could to repay them, even though he knew they had done what they did in friendship and didn't want a reward. Because he knew that without them he might just have drowned in a bottle under all the pressure. Might have risked his inheritance with his erratic behavior. Might have simply taken a shuttle and vanished into the darkness of space.

Not that he wouldn't have done what he did for them anyway, even without all of this shit happening beforehand.

When Pepper lost her precise command over her voice to a terrible bout of Melean flu and her place in the school with it - because the director was a dickwad who thought one couldn't be good enough at translating without a perfectly working voice box, apparently - he helped her get a place in business administrations. When Rhodey got his first assignment on the _Excelsior_ under what turned out to be a speciest chief engineer who flat out told him he wouldn't recommend him for a promotion ever, Tony, then nineteen and nicely settling in as owner of a major contractor to SpaceFleet - not to mention the mayor force behind making Stark Industries technologies a lot better than most anything else on the market -, simply told the Fleet that he wouldn't accept anyone but Aerospace Engineer Lieutenant jr grade James Rhodes as a liaison between the Fleet and Stark Industries (and Rhodey called him after that, complaining that he didn't need anyone helping him fight his battles, to which Tony only grinned and told him that that was what friends were for).

(Rhodey might have rolled his eyes a bit before returning Tony's grin and saying "Thanks, man" in that way he had).

When Pepper graduated from university Tony hired her on the spot as his PA - "I know you deserve better, and you could do better, but Obie's not letting me hire you as part of my board of directors so how about you can just get all the experience he thinks you lack by helping me do my job-" - "You mean, do your job for you." -"Yeah, well, anyway - you get the experience and in a few years you get the promotion you deserve."

Pepper had stared at him, gnawing on her lower lip in the way she had always done when she was unsure. "What if I can't do it, Tony? Stane is right - I am inexperienced and all that's speaking for me are my grades."

And Tony had grinned, a little less amused and with more empathy. "Pep, who was the one who advised me throughout my first fumbling steps into learning my own company when she hadn't even finished her first semester? Who showed me how much power I had so I could help Rhodey? Who helped me get rid of the bad image Stark Industries had in some cycles?"

Pepper had blushed and looked at her feet, still unsure but also smiling, and when she'd looked up there had been a new confidence in her eyes, a new spark. "Well, in this case we should better get to work, Mr. Stark."

And Tony had felt a strange mix of confidence that this would work out and pride and not a little fear at what monster he'd created here. "You're not going to keep calling me _Mr. Stark_ , will you, Pepper?"

"We'll see, Mr. Stark."

  


And everything _had_ worked out for once, everyone _was_ happy. Sure, Tony got the reputation of being an unredeemable playboy and eternal bachelor for never settling down with someone. Preferring instead to send letters into space and meet with Loki every few months, sometimes only in passing when he was on official business, sometimes out in space in ever better EVA suits that he'd started to design on the side.

And he was ... he was happy, too, even if he was nearing thirty and Loki still looked too young to be legal (not that it kept him from whispering truly wicked things into Tony's com when they were exploring space and he really should have known that it would come back to bite him in the ass when he told Loki of his explorations as a teenager).

Of course, as with all good things, this, too, had to end, even though he hadn't expected for his ship to be entered two hours out from Sirius 4, or any of the rest that followed the massacre on his crew and the explosion that took out a good part of his ribcage, needing him to construct a new heart with the help of one Ho Yinsen while always being on the outlook for a way to escape their kidnappers.

And then he escaped, leaving a hopefully still alive Yinsen in a cryochamber on a dying satellite. He’d designed the new _flying_ EVA suit with Loki in mind but it came in very handy in this situation, too, even though even a suit that was superior to everything on the market right now wasn't capable of sustaining subspace flight for more than a few seconds, getting him to a near planet - class L, probably, though there didn't seem to be anything on it but air with more oxygen than the human body could easily handle and plants that Tony didn't dare eat - and no further.

Tony spend seven days tinkering with what was left of his suit after the crash landing, trying to get a signal out while his body fought with nausea and tinnitus that could be due to a concussion or just the oxygen-rich atmosphere, getting weaker by the day because he didn't dare eat anything, only drink the water from the nearby stream.

Somehow he must have managed to get something out, for when he was kneeling there on the seventh day, surrounded by plants that were greener than most everything he had ever seen and looked more appetizing the more he vomited the water up again, his stomach showing his complaint about its emptiness in a really funny way, a sudden noise came from above and when he looked up there was a little shuttle, meant to reach a planet’s surface from a starship. While he watched, unsure whether to believe this wasn't a hallucination – it wouldn’t have been the first - the shuttle came closer and landed and then there was Rhodey, in his red Fleet uniform that Tony had teased him about a couple hundred times, running towards him and then throwing his arms around Tony, not caring for his unhygienic state or the bile that must have run down his chest at one point.

"I thought I had lost you, man", he said, crying at least as much as Tony wanted to if he just had had the strength, and just pulled him in even closer, almost as close as Loki had back then, and Tony really didn't want it to end.

  


It was only later, when they had bundled him in the medbay and the doctors had hooked him up on more machines than even Tony was comfortable with - after he had eaten and slept and woken up with the unsettling feeling that one of the nurses must have given him a sponge bath because he was feeling much cleaner in his medical scrubs - that Rhodey told him about the message that had brought them here.

"I don't know who it came from", he said, throwing a meaningful look up at the camera in the corner of medbay while simultaneously gesturing in the direction of the hull, indicating that he knew _very well_ who it came from even though Tony had never breathed a word about Loki to him and he was loath to breach the subject now. "It was just a strange message send from your personal pad, telling us where to find you."

Tony couldn't hide the smile when he realized that his hands, having worked on improving the communication device between them many many times over the years, must have remembered what to do even though his brain barely managed to remember his name, and Loki, realizing that something had happened, had called Rhodey for help.

Two days later, when the doctor allowed him to leave the medbay for a short trip, he went to the observation deck with Rhodey.

The _Excellence_ had a much bigger crew than Howards's private little pleasure craft, but it was gamma shift and they had the whole room to themselves.

To themselves and Loki, who Tony had known would follow the ship, making sure they arrived as fast as possible and get Tony out of trouble, even though no-one of the crew seemed to have known that there was a Spacegod following them.

Rhodey was ... a little taken aback at seeing his hunch confirmed, but once he'd sworn secrecy to Loki as Tony had done years prior they went along swimmingly.

( _Far too good_ , Tony thought, as they bonded over teasing him as apparently all his friends did.)

  


Only when they were back on earth - back in Tony's house on New Malibu, after they'd gotten rid of the traitor Stane and Pepper had retired to her own room, leaving the two of them alone with a bottle of whiskey that was already far too empty - did Rhodey comment on it.

"How old is he, Tones?"

And Tony knew that tone, knew what this was about, because Rhodey might not be Loki but he knew him and there was no way he had missed that, even with Tony being half drugged-out on painkillers - or maybe because of that - and Loki being an alien.

Sighing he sank deeper into the couch, a hand thrown over his eyes, and mumbled: "Older than me, probably. Not that it matters, doesn't it?"

A warm hand settled on his shoulder, conveying acceptance and comfort because Rhodey knew that he would never ... "He looks at you the same way."

"I know." Tony pressed his eyes closed, hoping to shut the whole world out. "He ages at half the rate a human does, and he will stay young and alive long after I'm dust in space. I'm not the kind of asshole that would trap him in a relationship with a human who is older than him but I ... I like him. He's been my first friend, and I think I'm his first friend, too. And he knows that nothing can come out of this - believe me, I've told him - and ... I can have that, can't I? His friendship?"

And Rhodey squeezed his shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with friendship", he said and it should be reassuring, good, but they both knew that it was just ignoring the feelings Tony had for Loki.

  


His life changed after that - he gave Stark Industries to Pepper because without Obie managing it he needed someone competent as CEO and there was no-one he trusted more to do right than Pepper. He also stepped back from most official positions though he stayed owner and mayor shareholder and still invented something every now and then.

Instead he focused on building a ship - small but faster and with more shield power than anything else out there, fighting against crimes first as Iron Man - the man who could come at you with an EVA suit from outer space - and later, when a secret agency called SHIELD had gotten notice of him, together with a small rag-tag team of spies and agents and an actual defrosted superhero from three hundred years ago.

And while he sometimes asked himself how that had become his life he couldn't help but enjoy it.

He was helping people with the Avengers. Pepper made sure that his company didn't produce any more weapons. And out in space no-one questioned the times he closed the observation deck off, or the other times when he went out in his suit while they orbited an uninhabited planet.

(He had no doubt whatsoever that every single member of his team knew about Loki but they were a _team_ and they kept each other’s secrets.)

  


When in ended this time it wasn't even anything to do with him or Loki.

They had come back from a mission on Rigel 3 when word reached them that there had been an incident near the border with the Kree. Apparently a Federation ship had been chased by a couple of Kree ships and gotten too close to the territory an aes had chosen for themselve. And when neither the vessel nor the Kree ships had turned after a warning not to come closer the aes had simply destroyed the ships.

There was a last message from the Fedearion ship, life streaming what had happened up to an abrupt end when they had been hit by an invisible force. Another ship had surveyed the terrain four days later, once the aes had vanished, but they only found the wreckage of at least five ships.

Unsettled Tony had send a message out to Loki, intend on asking them what had happened, but he didn’t get an answer.

Not to this message, or the next one, or the three after that.

When he asked for the ship to be turned around, intend on checking whether the sensor or transmitter or any other part of the machine had been damaged, he found everything in perfect working order.

Everything was ok -

and Loki was still not answering.

  


And he wasn't the only one.

No-one knew what had happened but after The Incident there weren't any sightings of aesir anymore, no warnings of dangerous space or territorial warnings or even just simple runners along the ships. It was as if the aesir, from one day to the next, had vanished from space.

  


Tony didn't stop sending messages.

Unlike everyone else he knew enough about the aesir to know that they were still out there, still floating and running through space, enjoying themselves as they had done for thousands of years. Just ... away from any sentient eyes.

Probably under order from Odin, one of Loki's parents and current ruler of their race.

And it _hurt_ \- it hurt to lose his best friend, to have Loki not answering anymore - to not know whether he still even listened to the messages; they'd had a system where Loki could activate the message by singing Tony's name to minimize the risk of anyone else hearing it but he hadn't done that since The Incident so Tony had simply built another transmitter into the Avenger's hull and send them from the ship wherever they went.

And he knew he shouldn't do that - he risked getting Loki in trouble and if he stopped sending those messages it would just be easier for them to break apart, but ... whenever he send one out he thought, _This is the last,_ and then something else would happen - Steve would get some custom wrong, or Clint play some trick, or Pepper would outplay someone who thought to defraud her, or Tony would just feel lonely and ... he'd always shared that with Loki. Always shared it, always told him everything of his life and had Loki tell him of his life in turn and ...

People said a broken heart wouldn't kill you, that you would heal. And that might be true, because Tony lived still, still laughed and loved and smiled and went on.

But his heart wasn't broken - it was shattered, lying in his ribcage like the artificial thing that it was, pumping blood through his veins and feeling nothing when he looked even at the most beautiful of persons vying for his bed and hand.

He had never loved anyone but Loki, not romantically - did that make him lokiromantic? - but it had never been a problem. There _had_ always been Loki to love, and his friends, and knowing that he could never have more from Loki than friendship was ok, it was, as long as Loki was happy and _there_.

Now he was alone even though he knew he wasn't, with a heart lying heavy and shattered and dark in his chest like a weight he couldn't get rid of, and the only way to even find a little bit of solace was writing letters he didn't know whether anyone would read them and sending them out into the void.

  


  


He had turned one-hundred when he finally couldn't take it anymore.

There had been a big party - all his friends had been there, and Peter and MJ and little Chrys, and more paparazzi and business partners and whatever than he ever wanted to see again - "You _knew_ that everyone and their mother would come to the party", Pepper had told him with an amused eyeroll before walking away, rescuing Peter - Peter jr, that is, Rhodey's grandson, not the young man Tony had adopted because he was brilliant and good and deserved to lead the company - from one of the more intrusive reporters.

It was a big party, and there had been alcohol and laughter and everything had been wonderful - but it also reminded Tony that his heart was still empty. Sitting there and watching Pepper laugh at Norpe's side, watching Rhodey and Diyna dance to a slow waltz, arm in arm and so obviously in love even after more than sixty years ... watched his old team mates with their respective partners and the kids they all had set into the world, the grandkids and great-grandkid ... he had wanted this, too. Not the kids – he had Peter, after all, and he loved him like a true son of his blood - but the _love_.

And he knew that he was loved, that not a single one of these people would ever turn him away, but it was not the same. Wasn't the same when he was laying down in his bed every evening, thinking about his day and wanting to share it with someone else, with someone whose red eyes sparkled in mischief and love, whose skin was the perfect color of a night sky over New Malibu, and whose wings and horns and smirk made him look like a wicked demon come to tease a human into sin.

When he started the ship he knew that this, truly, would be the last time he would send a letter.

He wasn't taking his private ship, just a little pleasure vessel, just as he'd done more than eighty years ago after his parents' death. This time it was his own craft, capable of subspace travel and more sensors and transmitters than any ship of its size really needed.

He had left his affairs in order - one couldn't be owner of a business like Stark Industries without having a vacuum-tight testament - and there was a letter on his bed - written on real paper even if his hands trembled now from old wounds and the strain of age, and his eyes weren't the best anymore, either -, telling his family that he was out to find his love one last time.

They would know what it meant.

He didn't doubt that they would be sad - they loved him, after all - but they also had each other to hold themselves up and he didn't doubt that they would find happiness without him again. Hoped that they would forgive him for stealing himself away like a thief in the night, without saying proper goodbye, because they all knew that they wouldn't let him go when he told them what he was about to do.

It took him six hours to get far enough away that no other ship would pick up his signal before he turned the transmitter on and send his last letter out.

  


_Hello Loki_

_I know, we haven't spoken for a while. To be honest, I was a little busy with my birthday party. One hundred years to this day ... Standard years, that is. A little bit more than one hundred and five years in earth time ... never thought I would make it this far, what with my heart and the crime-fighting and Peter ... honestly, that boy, thought he would kill me with his antics sometimes ..._

_Anyway, the party was great, you should have seen it. I mean, seeing as Pepper was the driving force behind the organization that's a given but still ... there were more people there than stars in the sky ..._

_Do you still say that? That there are more people out there, and more secrets, and more adventures than stars in the sky? I really loved it when you did - it made me feel like there could be at least one person out there for me._

_Looks like there was one for me, and only one. I think ... I think I never told you ... I love you, Loki. I loved you when you were a brat younger than me, and I loved you when you were a teenager acting like full on hormones, and I loved you when you turned old enough that I have considered if there could be something between us, even if I was thirty and you looked barely twenty. I just ... I'm human, and I didn't want you bound to someone who will be dust in space very soon now ..._

_Did you ever think about dying, Loki? I don't think we ever talked about that ... at least I don’t remember it. Normally humans are buried in the planet we were born from ... earth to earth, ashes to ashes, you know? But ... I always wanted to be part of the space that you loved so much, so ... well, I guess I'm going to be a little bit of space dust._

_I just hope you're not going to eat me, that would be weird, I guess ..._

_I think ... I think I've said everything I wanted to tell you. I really hope you hear this because it is my last letter and honestly, pouring my feelings out in the aether is a little strange, and I think ... I think I want closure for you, too. I don't want you to wonder why there aren't any more letters, or whether I forgot about you ... I never forgot you, and I never will._

_Goodbye, Loki._

_I love you._

  


Turning the com off Tony sat there for a while longer, staring at the console, thinking about whether he had forgotten anything.

No. Everything he had intended to say was said, everything he needed to settle was done.

He activated the autopilot, setting a course back to New Malibu - there was no reason why his little ship should wait alone in the dark - with a delay of fifteen minutes to give him enough time to clear the space around it. Stroking one last time over the console of the little ship he got up, his every muscle and joint and bone protesting the movement after sitting still for hours - there was only so much medicine could do for someone who'd been wounded so much, so often in the various scraps he'd been in - and it took him a while until he reached the lockers with the EVA suits.

His own, light gray and boldly proclaiming STARK on his shoulders, was right in front.

He'd put it on so often that even with his joints cracking he didn't need more than a few minutes to pull it over - in his prime, he could put it on in thirty seconds or less, but that time was long gone.

The hatch opened for him without problem and he held onto the door for a moment before pushing himself off, propelling into space and away from the ship.

  


For a while he floated in space, enjoying the feeling of being one with the universe.

Most people were afraid of the cold, dark vastness of space, too planet-bound to truly enjoy being out here where the safety of gravitation was so far away.

Maybe it was because of Loki, or because he'd spend so much time on satellites and various star ships, learning how to pilot an EVA suit when he wasn't even fifteen, but Tony had never been truly afraid of space. Oh, he feared dying because there was a tear in his suit, or getting shot by a criminal, or getting caught in one of the explosions Clint was so fond of causing - that, yes.

Of space, free and dark and all-embracing? No.

Behind him, a sudden brightness alerted him that the little cruiser activated its engine, and then it vanished in a last, colorful ray of light.

And then Tony was truly alone.

Slowly turning around himself he let himself enjoy the beauty of space one last time, the brightness of the stars, the clusters showing their cradle, their twinkling that he knew Loki heard as a song more wonderful than any song any planet-bound being had ever brought forth. The darkness between them where new stars would be born in hundreds, thousands of years until the whole of the sky would be full of light.

He wasn't in a rush. The air in his suit would last him for another hour or so, at which point he suspected someone might come looking for him. They would find his letter and then they would run about in a hurry, trying to figure out where he was, trying to reach him.

But his com was out, and even if they could trace him back it would take them a few hours to get out here, at which point he would have long opened the suit and ceased to be.

Smiling he looked out at the beauty around him and used the thrusters in his hands to give himself a little spin, allowing him to trundle around and see _everything_.

  


He was still well within his time frame when suddenly something collided with his suit.

Startled - there wasn't anything supposed to be out here, that was the _whole reason_ for which he had chosen this part of space - he tried to turn around, only to find himself getting manhandled by strong arms himself.

And then he stared into red eyes that he could never ever forget, and all the rest of the universe fell away.

Loki looked ... different. Older. Where last he had been in the late stages of puberty he was now a young adult, confident and strong and vibrant with life. His skin, still dark like blue-colored love-in-iddlenesses, had gained even more lines - stripes of azure blue framing his horns, running over his cheeks and chin and neck, vanishing into his clothing.

He still wore the same style as he'd done as a kid, velvety black and emerald green, only now he had added stripes of glowing gold to it.

Glowing gold like the horns that rose proud and heavy from his forehead, majestic in a way that made it seem more a crown than a part of his anatomy. His wings, once more like a cherub's useless plumage, had grown, too. Each easily twice as big as Tony they towered over them, bathing them both in their gentle light.

"You came", Tony whispered, startling himself with his voice which was, even hoarse and dry and unused, still louder than anything else out here.

And he knew - _he knew_ \- that Loki couldn't hear him, couldn't understand him - his hearing wasn't made for this kind of sounds, was made for the songs of stars and black holes and other celestial bodies - but maybe he had learned to read lips because he put his hands around the globe that shielded Tony's head, pulling him in until Tony could rest his chunky gloves on his thighs - thighs so strong and delicate like glass - and then he moved his lips, slow and obvious, that it was easy for Tony to understand him.

_You are a fool._

And Tony smiled because Loki was _right_ \- he was a fool to hope he could see Loki again, even if only one last time, but he was a happy fool because he had his last wish granted -, pressing himself closer until his helmet rested between Loki's horns and his thigh was secure between Tony's.

"I love you", he said, as slow and careful as Loki had done.

And Loki understood him because the exasperation on his face melted into a warm smile, warm and loving, and he pressed back, holding Tony as securely as he did in turn.

_I love you, too._

And Tony wanted to cry because he was old - he was one hundred years old, with white hair and joints that creaked when he moved and skin that was all scar under the magic of the skinregen units - and here was Loki, young and beautiful, and they might love each other but they never could have what they wanted.

But Loki smiled, stroking over the helmet as if he wanted to soothe Tony's tears, and when Tony blinked, clearing his vision, he asked:

_Would you give up your world for me? I cannot give you the planets of your race, or their sights and sounds, but I can give you my world, the songs of the stars and the motion of the moons. And I can give you my love, if you want it._

And Tony blinked because ... because sixty, even forty years ago he would have said yes in an instance but now ... "I am old, Loki, and you are beautiful. There is nothing I can give you."

And Loki laughed, wide and honest as he'd always done.

_You have your love to give me, and that alone is more than I could ever ask for. But I can give you more - I can give you the life of my race._

And with that he showed Tony something that looked a lot like an apple the size of a large apricot, made of gold and glowing even more than Loki's wings, like a small star had been caught in it.

_An apple of youth, the only thing that can ever make a human into one of us. It took me a long time to convince Odin to let you join us, and even longer to acquire one._

The knowledge that Loki hadn't abandoned him either - that even with the silence between them Loki had still thought of him - brought tears to his eyes and he had to blink a few times to keep his vision clear because he wanted to see Loki when he answered. "I do. I do want. I would give up the universe for you."

And Loki smiled ever brighter, so obviously happy that Tony couldn't help but let his hand wander higher, press his fingers lightly against Loki's blue cheek.

And Loki let him for a while before he pulled himself together, all business yet even though his eyes still smiled.

_You have to open your helmet and then - then you have to kiss me. It will be unpleasant - you are not meant for space. But you must not stop kissing me._

And Tony smiled. "Loki, I dreamed of kissing you since I was fifteen and far too uncomfortable with the thought because you were too young. If you want me to kiss you I will, and if I die kissing you I would die happy."

Loki rolled his eyes, clearly showing what he thought of this, but then he only put his fingers up, showing all five, before he pulled one in.

And Tony understood, more than familiar with wordless countdowns after his years as an agent for justice, and fingered his helmet's release.

At _one_ Loki pushed the golden apple in his mouth and then he surged forward while Tony's helmet moved back, leaving him exposed to the vacuum of space.

There was coldness - coldness like he'd never known before, like there had never been warmth here - for a small moment and then there was Loki, cold and delicate like spun sugar, and his lips pressed to Tony's in a moment he would never forget.

Kissing Loki wasn't like kissing a human at all. There wasn't anything warm or yielding to it, nothing that said _alive_. And yet it wasn't like pressing his lips to stone either because the lips did move, wandering over his own and making him yield in a way he hadn't know before, making him open his mouth and then pressing the apple into him, warm and soft and ... he didn't have words for it because which human had ever tasted sunlight before?

The world froze around him and he could feel himself freeze with it - he couldn't feel his nose, or his cheeks. Couldn't blink anymore or move or even breathe. The only thing he felt were Loki's lips on his own and the taste of sunlight on his tongue.

 _If I die now, I die a happy man,_ he thought even though his blood started to boil in his veins and his vision grew dark.

He wasn't sure what made him swallow - some instinct maybe that every human had - but suddenly the light was in him, clearer and brighter than anything ever before and he felt something race through his body - not warmth, not something as fickle as that, but ... the absence of cold, as if for once the dark space actually embraced him, pulled him into her arms and welcomed him home.

  


He didn't remember much of what happened afterwards, only snippets and pieces of light and darkness and colors he didn't have a name for, sounds he knew had to come from the stars because Loki told him so but he didn't know them.

Loki.

Loki was always there, in every memory, in every awake moment, holding his hand and smiling at him.

How had he ever thought him cold? Or hard? Or fragile?

Loki felt like a star, a giant ball of gas - stronger than anything else, yet smooth and yielding in a way no human could ever comprehend. And when he kissed Tony his kisses tasted of moonlight, of stardust, of space and the fire in the heart of a sun.

When he woke a final time they were lying on a ... on a gravitational crossing, on a point where all the celestial bodies were in balance for a small eternity, letting them rest there.

Shocked he stared around himself because he could ... _see_ it, for lack of another word. Could _see_ gravity and the dust left behind by the planets circling their stars ... could hear the movements of stars and watch magnetic fields and see entry points into subspace and … there was so much more, so much that no sentient being - no planet-dwelling being, that is - had ever even thought of before.

"You look overwhelmed", Loki said and Tony stared at him.

He could understand him for once - not read the effects his words had on the universe but actually _hear_ him - and it was nothing like what he'd thought he would sound like. What he'd heard - seen - before ... it was like hearing the piano and the drums of a concert but missing out on all the rest, on the strings and the winds and the harp.

Overwhelming was an understatement.

"You -", Tony started and then he stopped because his own voice wasn't what he was used to. Somewhere along the lines he'd picked up the language of the aesir - _his_ language, too, now, and wasn't that strange - but while he could comprehend _hearing_ it - somewhat, at least - _speaking_ it was ... unimaginable. Like forming sounds with his whole body that he should have never been able to.

Loki smiled still, giving him the time to come to terms with it.

Finally, Tony found his tongue again. "You are beautiful."

And he was. Because now that he could truly see him - could see the magnetic fields playing around his horns and see the way light in ranges he couldn't even see as a human flickered over his skin, giving his skin a color that wasn't blue but also was no other color Tony had ever seen before.

Leaning forward Loki let his finger wander over Tony's cheek. "You are nothing to sneeze at either."

Tony blinked, then looked down at himself.

His skin was smooth like it hadn't looked anymore since he himself had been 25, maybe a little more golden than before, a little more honey than true tan, but that wasn't the biggest change. His hands were red - the same hot-red he'd always loved in his hovercars -, tinted like a glove just that they weren't gloves. It were his hands, fingers and golden nails and all, with the red fading along his lower arm like spilled water. More red covered his chest and back, with a blue glowing triangle where his artificial heart had been.

His legs were his own again though there was more red encasing his feet.

Not that he really cared right now because the reason he could see where the red of his chest changed into gold again over his belly? Yeah. He was naked. And he was definitely still a he.

"No other aes I know of has that", Loki told him, grinning, while Tony hesitantly touched himself.

Yeah, still felt mostly the same, though whether it still worked was yet to be seen.

Moment.

"No other aes? Are you telling me you don't have sex?" Not that he necessarily needed sex or anything but -

Yet Loki only laughed. "We have all the time in the universe", he promised. "I will show you later. Right now" And with that he shifted so that he straddled Tony's legs. "Right now I want to kiss you."

And Tony smiled. Last time he had been dying and half out of his mind with shock and the transformation and it had still been the best kiss of his life. This time, being able to take his time with his lover and being actually able to feel him like one should his partner, could only be better.

  


He was right; it was so unbelievable much better that he spend doing it until the suns had moved too far and their little balance spot became unstable.

  


  


Ruler Odin had not only allowed Loki to turn Tony but also - apparently on the insistence of two of Loki's siblings, one of whom apparently being the aes who had caused the incident - taken back the ban on interaction with planet people, at least as far as casual sightings went.

Not that it stopped Tony from looking after his friends and family to make sure that they knew that he was alright - finding out in the process that between his changing and kissing Loki and meeting Odin and the rest of the family - Hela _really_ was nice, as long as no-one angered them - and kissing Loki some more he had lost more than four Standard months.

There was a lot of crying and laughing and realizing that apparently he looked just strange enough now with his new colors and being young again that he needed to prove who he was to his family.

Still, they forgave him and were happy for him. Were happy for Loki, too, who had his arm slung around Tony in a rather possessive manner whenever they met anyone that Tony smiled at, as if Tony wasn't completely aware and ok with what it meant that he had given up his world for Loki.

Settling into his new place as a prince consort of the aesir royal family was easy, even more when he realized that Thor wasn't a jerk all the time and Amora, Loki's friend, was actually a more seductive version of Clint.

Oh, and he got to spend a lot of time with Loki. Learning and kissing and laughing and kissing some more and ...

Yeah. The sex was great, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, if you haven't yet, go give the artist your love. The pic is really truly amazing and deserves it


End file.
